The shelling is part of an offensive that has been going on for days as the regime tries to retake the town of Rastan, which has been under the control of Syrian rebels since January.

The Local Coordination Committees activist network and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for human rights say Rastan was under renewed and intense shelling as of Friday morning.

Videos posted online by activists showed thick smoke and shells slamming into districts in Rastan.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

BEIRUT (AP) — Syria’s main opposition council is crumbling under the weight of infighting and divisions over issues that cut to the heart of the revolution, including accusations that the movement is becoming as autocratic as the regime it wants to drive out.

The slow disintegration of the Syrian National Council, which has become the international face of the uprising, could complicate Western efforts to bolster the opposition, just as President Bashar Assad’s regime gathers momentum in its crackdown on dissent.

On Thursday, SNC leader Burhan Ghalioun said he was ready to step down once a replacement is found, amid mounting criticism of his leadership.

The decision came just days after he was re-elected for a third, three month term during a council vote held in Rome. The council has said it would rotate the presidency every three months, so Ghalioun’s repeated appointments rankled some who wanted a new face.

“I will not accept under any circumstances to be a divisive candidate, and I am not after any post,” said Ghalioun, an exiled Syrian and professor at the Sorbonne in Paris. “I will resign as soon as a new candidate is picked, either by consensus or new elections.”

Ghalioun, a secular Sunni Muslim academic who has led the council since its formation in September, has been criticized by some opposition figures of being too close to the Muslim Brotherhood and of trying to monopolize power.

Fifteen months into the uprising, Syria’s opposition is still struggling to overcome internal rivalries and power struggles that prevent the movement from gaining the traction it needs to present a credible alternative to Assad. Its international backers have repeatedly appealed for the movement to pull together and work as one unit.

But as the conflict becomes more violent, with rebel fighters and others taking up arms, attempts to operate under a single umbrella have become increasingly difficult.

“Although it (the SNC) was conceptualized as a formation designed to represent society as a whole, it has played a very polarizing role. By mishandling personality issues, it has alienated more prominent opposition figures than necessary,” said Peter Harling of the International Crisis Group think tank.

The U.N. estimated in March that the violence in Syria has killed more than 9,000 people. Hundreds more have been killed since then as a revolt that began with mostly peaceful calls for reform has transformed into an armed insurgency.

Since its inception last September, the Syrian National Council has served as a reference point for Western leaders when it comes to the Syrian opposition.

But the SNC, whose leaders are largely Syrian exiles, has tried with little success to unify the opposition and has alienated minorities inside Syria, including the Kurds and the Alawites, the tiny sect to which Assad belongs. The Alawite community has largely stuck by Assad.

Some opposition figures accuse the SNC leadership of being out of touch with reality on the ground. Several prominent dissidents have already quit the organization, calling it “autocratic.”

In response to the discord and perceived ineffectiveness of the group, some Syrian protesters have recently taken to carrying banners written on them: “The SNC does not represent me.”

In the northern town of Binnish, protesters this week held a poster mocking Ghalioun, saying preparations were under way to “crown him as emperor because no alternative among Syria’s 23 million population could be found.”

Unlike Libya’s National Transitional Council, which brought together most factions against Moammar Gadhafi’s regime and was quickly recognized internationally, the SNC has no real leadership on the ground and has not been officially recognized by the major powers.

The opposition is already reeling from significant losses over the past few months when rebel fighters were largely driven out of key strongholds — the city of Idlib near the northern border with Turkey and the Baba Amr district in the central city of Homs.

Despite his pariah status among much of the international community, Assad is still firmly in power and the U.N. has ruled out any military intervention of the type that helped bring down Gadhafi. Several rounds of sanctions and other attempts to isolate Assad have done little to stop the bloodshed.

The international community has now pinned its hopes on a peace plan brokered by international envoy Kofi Annan. More than 200 observers are on the ground in Syria to monitor a cease-fire, but violations are reported by both sides every day.

A key activist group called the Local Coordination Committees threatened to withdraw from the SNC on Thursday, saying the council had “drifted away from the spirit of the revolution.”

Several members of the group had been preparing to withdraw before Ghalioun announced his pending resignation.

“We have seen nothing in the past months except political incompetence in the SNC and a total lack of consensus between its vision and that of the revolutionaries,” the LCC said.

The LCC — a network of activists based both inside and outside of Syria — accused the SNC leadership of marginalizing council members and acting alone on major decisions.

Ghalioun ran against George Sabra, a Christian council member seen by many as a better choice to soothe concerns by Syria’s religious minorities, some of whom have remained loyal to Assad out of fear for their future in case his regime collapses.

A conference sponsored by the Arab League in Cairo to help unite the disparate opposition was canceled this week, largely because of infighting between various groups.

In a rare acknowledgment of shortcomings, a leading council figure said the group needed an overhaul and should become more inclusive.

Bassma Kodmani, a Paris-based senior figure in the council, said by telephone Thursday that the LCC concerns were “justified and legitimate.” But she also said differences within the Syrian opposition were a sign of democracy. “Otherwise we would be just like the Baath Party and the Assad regime.”

The Ibex 35 index was off more than 2 points shortly after trading began Friday. Banks were among the biggest losers.

Moody’s acted late Thursday, citing banks’ load of non-performing loans amid a recession-plagued economy, their creditworthiness and the government’s sovereign debt problems, among other woes.

Those punished included Banco Santander, SA, the eurozone’s largest bank by market capitalization.

Shares in Bankia SA, a recently nationalized bank, took a roller coaster ride Thursday, ending up sharply lower on reports depositors pulled out a €1 billion in a week.

On the bond market the interest rate on 10-year bonds was unchanged at 6.25 percent.

Things are slowly changing, but not without resistance. Last month, a report by France’s top health authority concluded there was no agreement among scientists about whether psychotherapy works for autism, and it was not included in the list of recommended treatments.

That provoked an outcry from psychiatrists. Groups including Freudian societies, the World Association of Psychoanalysis and France’s Child Institute started a petition calling on the French government to recognize their clinical approach, focused on psychotherapy.

“The situation in France is sort of like the U.S. in the 1950s,” said Dr. Fred Volkmar, a U.S. expert who directs the Child Study Center at Yale University. “The French have a very idiosyncratic view of autism and, for some reason, they are not convinced by the evidence.”

Behavioral methods, which focus on helping autistic children communicate with others and develop social skills, are the norm in Britain, Canada, Japan, the U.S. and elsewhere in Europe. But they’re seldom used in France.

France has long been criticized for its approach to treating autism. In 2002, the charity Autism Europe lodged a complaint against France with the Council of Europe, charging the country was refusing to educate autistic children, as required under the European Social Charter.

The charge was upheld and the European Committee of Social Rights declared “France has failed to achieve sufficient progress” in educating autistic children. The committee also slammed France for making autistic people “an excluded group” and said there was a chronic shortage of care.

Volkmar said some forms of psychotherapy might be helpful for high-functioning autistic children to handle specific problems like anxiety, but should not be considered a first-line treatment. He said the vast majority of autistic children in the U.S. — more than 95 percent — attend school.

But French children with autism are lagging far behind. According to government data, fewer than 20 percent of autistic children attend school. Mostly they’re either kept at home or go to a day hospital for psychiatric sessions.

Many French experts insist psychotherapy is essential. “I would never say that psychoanalysis is ‘the best’ method, but it is invaluable,” said Marie Dominique Amy, president of CIPPA, a French association of psychotherapists and psychiatrists. She said even in autistic children who don’t speak, the therapy can be done through gestures and interpreting their body language.

Amy said she had nothing against behavioral methods, which could be included in a comprehensive treatment program. But she said it was impossible to accept the assessment from France’s top health authority that there was no consensus for the use of psychotherapy for treating autism.

Amy also said she had seen autistic children improve after being treated with a controversial therapy known as “packing.” That involves wrapping nearly naked children in wet, cold towels in an attempt to “reconnect” them with their bodies. The practice is rare, but is allowed in France as part of research projects. Amy said she had seen autistic children start talking, writing and drawing after the sessions. She said it was essential to get parents’ permission before trying packing.

According to the French Association of Psychiatrists, packing can sometimes produce “spectacular” results. The group said more autistic children in France could benefit from the method if authorities did not so tightly regulate its use.

Others condemn the practice as barbaric. “Not only is there no evidence that packing works, but it’s unthinkable something potentially dangerous and harmful would be performed on vulnerable children,” said Tony Charman, chair of autism at the Institute of Education in London.

Catherine Consel was horrified when she and her husband found out their autistic son Thomas, now 20, had been subjected to regular packing sessions for three years while he was treated in a Bordeaux hospital. “I was shocked,” Consel said. “We trusted the doctors to take care of him.” Consel and her husband found out about the packing sessions by chance years later, after Thomas’ hospital was featured in a television story about the technique.

She and her husband later demanded Thomas’ medical records, where psychiatrists wrote that his autism was the result of his parents’ mental problems. “It was very difficult to read what (Thomas) had been subjected to,” she said of the packing sessions. “They noted it all very precisely, how long it had taken and how he had screamed and cried,” she said.

Consel is convinced Thomas would have fared better had the family stayed in the U.S., where he was born. “There is only one way to do things in France,” she said. “And sometimes the government makes the wrong choice.”

Elsewhere in Europe, packing is unheard of and even psychotherapy is rare.

In Spain, for example, autism treatment guidelines published in 2006 lumped psychotherapy together with alternative therapies like chelation, which involves the injection of chemicals into the body to remove heavy metals. Spanish officials ruled there was no evidence such alternative treatments work.

Joaquin Fuentes, a psychiatrist and scientific adviser for a Spanish autism group, said that where he works in the Basque region, autistic children go to regular schools and none are sent to psychiatric hospitals. “To be exposed to psychoanalytic treatment is a painful and unethical way of treating children with autism,” he said.

Some French parents resort to sending their children abroad to get adequate treatment. When Andy Beverly’s son Guillaume was diagnosed as autistic at age 2, Guillaume began to receive treatment from psychiatrists in Paris.

“They said his autism was a psychosis and that Guillaume needed to figure out himself how to get over it,” Beverly said. After years of sporadic schooling in France, Beverly sent Guillaume to a school in Belgium that focuses on techniques to help him interact with others and do simple things like putting on his coat. He is convinced that Guillaume, now 15, would be more advanced if he’d gotten better treatment as a child.

“I started out having a lot of trust in the French doctors, but it was only later that I realized we were in the wrong country,” Beverly said. “The situation may finally be getting better, but for a lot of families with autistic children, that’s not enough.”

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Online:

www.autismeurope.org